For C2E2 (the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo) 2023, Gaby and James Martineau hired designer Erin Gallagher to create some uniquely glamorous Star-Wars-Rococo-themed costumes. Shortly after the event, Gaby and James hired Distant Era to make their portraits, wearing those costumes. In this post, we feature James Martineau’s solo portrait from the session!
Super Trooper
James last appeared in The All Worlds Traveller as “The Orc Scribe” in The People of Light and Shadow series. We’ve worked and played together many times over the years, and this session provided another opportunity for us to hang out and experiment.
James’s Star Wars Rococo costume interprets the stormtrooper, as you can see with the sequined mask he’s holding in this bonus shot from the session.
“What’s that flashing?”
For James’s official portrait selection, he chose a dark and shadowy look, in which he wields an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
James loves image comparison sliders, and he confessed to spending much time swiping back and forth on the one in his “The Orc Scribe” entry, so I’m including another slider here just for him.
We lit this portrait with a beauty dish, short lighting James from the opposite side so that the light touched the far side of his face and body, leaving the camera side dark. We used a light with a red gel to fill in the shadow/lightsaber side. This way, when we add the saber effect, the red light is motivated from the saber side like so:
“I was but the learner…”
James’s official portrait selection follows below. I thought this would be a relatively simple edit, but I’m usually wrong about such things. One of the biggest challenges is the way the light from the saber interacts with the environment around it. The darker the environment, the brighter the saber looks. The brighter and redder the environment, the more challenging it is to make the saber’s outline distinct. In addition, movie lightsabers tend to be thin and tapered and don’t light up—the effects are added later; sabers you can buy need to light up, so they’re thicker and more uniform in shape. Thus, they look larger in pictures. Since their cores are white, that white draws focus in the image, being the brightest part. It took us some time to tone the saber how we wanted. Plus, sRGB screens can’t show the full gamut of red or its transparency. To get a real look, hit James up for a gander at the print.
“So be it, Jedi…”
When next we meet, we’ll take a look at Gaby Martineau’s Star Wars Rococo costume from this super fun session! I’ll leave you with a few more bonus shots of the inestimable James Martineau clowning around at the session.
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